The Hinge of History

There is a widespread suspicion that we are at some unique historical crossroads, that we are at the end of the old undeviating path of economic development, that ‘the subject of history has changed’.

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In the advanced societies of the world, with their market economies, open societies and democratic politics, a dominant theme appears to be spent, the theme of progress in a certain, one-dimensional sense. The new theme … is no longer expansion but what I shall call improvement, qualitative rather than quantitative development. (Dahrendorf,

The New Liberty

, p. 14)

This assumes a particular view of the historical process, a view in which societies must inevitably progress through a given series of stages which form the path of development. Dahrendorf’s ‘new theme’ was earlier canvassed as the ultimate stage in one such theory of history, that contained in W. W. Rostow’s

The Stages of Economic Growth

.

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